It's safe to assume that Steven Pressley devoted a hefty percentage of his pre-match preparation to the best way of dealing with the battering-ram menace of James Hanson.

But his best-laid plans were sabotaged as Bradford twice conjured up immaculate service for their towering target-man – the injury-time winner barely a minute after Reda Johnson had claimed his second goal to seemingly salvage what would have been a highly satisfactory opening-day point for the Sky Blues.

Hanson and Johnson were also key figures in the incident, two minutes into the second period, that presented Alan Sheehan with the opportunity to slide home the penalty that gave the Bantams the 2-1 edge they protected until that thrilling finale.

But in a game that offered echoes of Coventry’s 3-2 defeat at Crawley on the first day of last season and their 3-3 draw at Valley Parade in November, it was a brace of decisions by replacement referee Mike Dean that ultimately proved the difference between the two sides.

Citing the evidence of his instant video replay, Pressley was insistent that his men should have been presented with the opportunity to notch their third equaliser of an absorbing battle when John Fleck hit the deck in the fourth and final minute of injury time – but Dean not only waved away Sky Blue protests, he added insult to perceived injury by booking the substitute for simulation with a touch more flamboyance than seemed entirely necessary in the circumstances .

Line-of-sight restrictions make it difficult to venture a theoretically unbiased opinion on that controversy but we can definitely take issue with Dean’s earlier decision.

Hanson is something of a throwback in the centre-forward stakes – a man, indeed, who operates as if he thinks Nat Lofthouse and co were too powderpuff by half – and he invariably gives at least as good as he gets in the grappling matches initiated by most set-pieces these days. But although he was clearly the grabber before he became the grabbee when Sheehan lofted a left-wing corner into the Coventry box, Dean opted to punish the secondary phase of routine mutual manhandling.

The raucous mass appeal from the slopes of the Bradford kop was possibly a subliminal factor – Dean earlier giving Coventry the benefit of the doubt when Andy Webster slid in on Andrew Davies in front of the 1,406 Coventry supporters occupying the two-tier enclosure at the other end of the lop-sided arena.

But that’s a factor outside of Pressley’s control; he will have been far more concerned by the lack of communication that saw Jordan Clarke concede the softest of corners from an aimless Stephen Darby cross that was drifting out for a goal-kick.

One can also imagine that his debriefing will make much of the ease with which Hanson’s trademark headers were laid out on the proverbial plate.

Marcus Tudgay and Danny Swanson were both shrugged off the ball in the build-up to the first, although the former might well claim he was fouled before Billy Knott regained possession and gave Billy Clarke the time and space to measure his chipped delivery to perfection.

And while Jason Kennedy deserves full credit for the way in which he surged down the right to fire over an all-but unstoppable cross for Hanson’s second, either Swanson or Danny Pugh could perhaps have halted him in his tracks at the expense of a yellow card (the more ruthless half of the BBC Coventry & Warwickshire contingent was certainly of the opinion that somebody should have taken one for the team!)

Pressley avoided that debate but made no attempt to disguise his annoyance at “a momentary lapse of concentration”.

He said: “We’re so disappointed to lose a goal at that stage and have nothing to show for our efforts after working so hard to get ourselves back into the game.

“Both Hanson’s headers were terrific – the delivery and his movement were first-class – but we allowed them to get into their most dangerous areas far too easily, without particularly good play. It was something we were aware of, something we tried to prevent, but we couldn’t.”

If you’re looking for what-might-have-beens, however, you might start in the second minute, when Clarke couldn’t quite get a clean far-post connection to Pugh’s raking cross, or the 15th when Pugh, excelling in his wing-back role, again split the home defence but Jim O’Brien dragged his angled shot wide.

Two more of the seven Coventry players making their competitive bow, Tudgay and Josh McQuoid, displayed promising early signs of developing an effective partnership but it was one of Bradford’s summer recruits, Billy Clarke, who proved the most dangerous raider in the first half – twice teeing up ground-level chances that proved outside Hanson’s area of expertise before opening up that corridor of aerial uncertainty that he exploits so impressively.

With Pressley still looking for a fourth striker, the Sky Blues don’t have that sort of weapon in their front-line armoury right now, although it looks as if they can bump up their quota of headed goals this season.

Webster’s challenge for a free-kick won the corner that Johnson dispatched for his first. And, having been flung forward as an emergency centre-forward, the newly-appointed City skipper rammed in his second when Pugh’s fine cross set up Tudgay for a header that was acrobatically saved by Jordan Pickford.

Pressley was able to glean a number of other positives from the game, saying: “People were concerned whether we could create as many opportunities as we did last year and deliver the same levels of excitement and I think we demonstrated that we can.

“Of course, football’s about winning games and there’s no disguising that this was a disappointing result, but there were some hugely encouraging signs.

“The commitment of the players was absolutely first-class – we showed a real determination to get back in the game and put them under a lot of pressure that finally told with our second goal.

“I was really pleased with the shape of the team and I think, if we had ended up with a 2-2 draw, everybody would have been delighted.”

Too true, and it’s perhaps of some consolation that he won’t have to worry about Hanson again until Valentine’s Day.

Always assuming, of course, that one or both of them hasn’t moved on...